December 01, 2011 – Confidence is defined by Webster as “a feeling of one’s powers or a faith or belief that one will act in a right, proper or effective way”.

Confidence for a cross-country skier is knowing that no matter what happens during a race or what someone else does that you will ski to best of their abilities.

The problem with confidence in cross-country skiing is that most ski racers base their level of confidence in themselves, on the results of the race. But no one skier has any control over what any other skier is going to do. As a result, other skiers can do unexpectedly great things and this can undermine the confidence of other skiers. And, as I wrote in my previous column, the time of the race and of each skier, really doesn’t mean very much, so there is no such thing as world records or personal bests to fall back on.

This is, I believe, is what separates those skiers who perform consistently well from those who have inconsistent results or who have hot streaks or experience slumps. The truly confident skier will have a bad race but will bounce back right away with another good performance. They will ski within a certain range of results for pretty well the whole season and they are able to “peak” at the right time each year. They go to the start line in each race knowing that they have done the necessary work to be their best and having faith that they will be at their best.

However, many skiers from the lowest levels right up to the World Cup, need to have good results to have confidence in themselves. If they have a bad race or two their confidence is destroyed and instead of thinking “I had a bad race, but I am still a good skier who has trained properly” they think “I am a bad skier who cannot ski well” and they go into a slump. They usually stay in this slump until they have a good result, but even then they are not sure that it will change anything.

Another factor that affects confidence in cross-country skiers is the different techniques and race formats. Most skiers will say to themselves – even to others – I am not a good classic skier or skate skier or sprinter or distance skier, etc. and most of this evaluation is based on past results. These past results have affected their confidence in the style or format which affects their future performance and creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you take a look at the results from the weekend of racing at Ruka you can see many skiers with this results based confidence – except for a few racers. Petter Northug of Norway never seems to let a bad race affect his next race – he came back from a poor sprint to dominate the next two races and win the overall series. Marit Bjoergen has confidence that she can race well in any race and she also showed that by dominating in Kuusamo.

After poor results on the first weekend in Sjusjoen, Norway, Justyna Kowalczyk (Poland) said on her blog that it was normal for her to start slowly because of her big training load and that she will get better in Kuusamo and future races leading up to the Tour de Ski in January. She did just that in Kuusamo finishing in 5th place overall. She has the right attitude and will do better as the year goes on.

A couple of North Americans, Len Valjas and Kikkan Randall, raced with confidence all weekend. Both had solid top 5 results in the first day sprints and carried the results forward in the distance races where they have not been as good in the past. Kikkan eventually finished 6th overall while Len had his best result of 29th. Both have stated that they are more confident in their distance racing because they have done their training properly.

Alex Harvey showed that he has confidence in himself by moving up to finish 11th overall on Sunday. So, too, did Devon Kershaw who used his confidence in his classic ability to move up to 20th.

I am concerned about the confidence level of the American men and the Canadian women. They did not do very well over the weekend with Chandra Crawford as the best Canadian woman in 54th and Kris Freeman the best US man in 43rd. They need to stay positive about themselves and their ability and all of the great training that they have done so that these early results do not affect the races coming up.

There are also certain skiers who seem to do well only in either skating or classic or in sprints or distance skiing who seem to have little confidence in their ability in their weaker style. Ivan Babikov seems to be unable to have a good result in classic lately. For him it cannot be about fitness and his technique looks good so you have to think that some of the issue is a lack of confidence based on previous poor results.

Check out your favourite skier and see how consistent that they are this season. Follow them on Twitter or Facebook or on their blogs. Remember that inconsistent results are more likely a sign of poorer mental skills than physical or technical skills and that the most important mental skill is confidence.

Now the sprinters move on to Dusseldorf, Germany while the distance skiers from North America are either in Italy or Switzerland training for the next distance race in Davos, Switzerland. Dusseldorf has been kind to North American sprinters in the past, especially Crawford…so let’s see if these skiers can get their “mojo” back.